[Wittrs] More on "meaning as use"
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:45:25 -0700
The "meaning as use" dictum is introduced in conjunction
with "language games" designed to make this point.
In a complicated piece of machinery, like a wrist watch,
you have many moving parts, however none need be
described as "referring" to another, even though their
various actions are tightly coupled.
Parts that physically touch one another nevertheless
are not described as "referring" to one another.
Likewise, a word like "mind" has no specific meaning
minus its role in specific language games, which are myriad.
We should free ourselves of the notion that "mind" has
a referent versus simply a role in various complex machine-
like accounting systems.
It's a token, a moving part, a component, a cog. There
need be no specific experience or phenomenon at the
other end of a pointing stick.
Nothing in a wrist watch is pointing, except the long and
short hand on the face, which by social convention we
have learned to read as designating specific numbers.
On a digital watch, pointing is replaced with a direct
display of these same numbers.
The pre-Wittgensteinian believes that words are primarily
nouns or names that tag objects. But even the social
convention of tagging has many forms. Routing tags or
bar codes are bear a family resemblance to proper names
applied to human beings or cities. Further investigation
discloses plenty of divergent patterns however.
Imagine a cocktail party where, for purposes of anonymity,
one had to select from pre-printed nametags. You would pick
one corresponding to your gender (up to you) and wear it
for that event and people would address you by that name,
but at the next event you might choose a different nametag
and so forth.
Even this slight variation for the norm helps break the hold
of the idea of "referents". I am Robert one day, George the
next, and it's easy to see these names as tools, tokens.
In the game of Monopoly or other board game, the pieces
do not refer to anything. In pushing the little car around the
board, I may say "I am winning" or "I am making money",
which might suggest that the little car refers to me. But I
could just as well say "my car is winning" or "my piece
is making money" in which case the car doesn't refer to
me. Perhaps I'm pushing someone else's piece around
the board (people get bored with Monopoly, go to bed
early).
So we see how easy it is to break these ghostly bonds
of association, which is another way of saying the
game doesn't really depend on them being there.
The word "mind", like the little car on the Monopoly board,
is not obligated to anchor to some referent off the board,
floating in some nebulous ether as some "hard to put one's
finger on" phenomenon or "thing". "My mind is a thing in
my head" is already a problematical statement that we
wouldn't know what to do with, although it's not clear that
it's "wrong" so much as "useless".
Computer languages were far less evolved when
Wittgenstein was writing, however they today provide a
clear exhibit of meaning as use, as the language games
have everything to do with driving machinery, making
things happen, more like those "orders in battle" he
was talking about (indeed, we speak of "imperative
languages" sometimes, of expressions as
"commands").
In the Python language, one tends to use the word
"self" a lot, and indeed it plays an analogous role to
"self" in ordinary speech, in that every object has one,
and because of this "self", each object is "personalized"
i.e. rendered distinct from every other, even if it
arises from the same blueprint or class definition.
Academic logicians may have no training in such a language,
as analytic philosophy hasn't upgraded very quickly. If we
ever get to a point where contemporary high level
computer languages get into the philosophical literature,
post-Wittgensteinian especially, we may find we're blessed
with yet another tool for dislodging outmoded ways of
conceiving of "meaning".
[ Speaking of Python, we also have a strong nominalist
model in that everything is an object and every object
has its names (note use of the plural). Yes, that's right,
the very same object may have lots and lots of names,
all pointing to the very same thing. It's only when a
thing ceases to have any names at all that it's
automatically "garbage collected", meaning the memory
it occupied is now free to hold other things instead
(this memory is called "the heap"). ]
So in computer languages we have language games in
which "self" has plenty of meaning. It would also be quite
permissible to use the word "mind" in place of "self" (the
Python interpreter would not fuss at this). Yet no one
imagines that this use of "self" or "mind" is with reference
to some spooky mental phenomenon that we can't quite
put our hands on. There's far less superstition about what
it takes for these words to be meaningful.
For this reason alone I would urge anyone wishing to
understand the later Wittgenstein to pay some attention
to computer languages.
Kirby
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